Minimum Wage Should Have A Reasonable Increase Right Now! by Dan Blankenship This July, it will be five years since the national minimum wage has increased. The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour. Of course, each state has the right to legislate it up from that amount. Indiana has kept it at the federal level. When I started my first real job back in 1981, it was $3.35 per hour worked. There have usually been two prevailing lines of thinking when it comes to increasing the minimum wage. The first, that it creates a “living wage” and keeps people out of poverty. The second, it puts more of a burden on employers and causes a cutback in the workforce. I reject both presumptions and offer a third theory concerning an immediate raise in the national or State of Indiana minimum wage: Minimum wage was never meant to be a “living wage”, whatever that even means, and if we are to “teach” beginning workers about the benefits of our Capitalist system, we must at least pay them a wage that allows them to enjoy the “fruits of their labor.” As a working, high school teenager, I was able to earn enough money to buy a car, put gas in it, and go out on the town almost every other weekend. I looked forward to a paycheck that met my current necessities. I support an immediate raise to $8.00 an hour for a variety of reasons. In 1981, when I was earning $3.35 an hour carrying out groceries, I was paying around $1.25 for a gallon of gas. Today’s minimum wage worker is making $7.25 an hour and paying nearly $4.00 a gallon for gas. Combine that with urban sprawl, which has left many minimum wage employees with a much longer commute to and from their jobs, and the financial stress is doubled. Add to that the skyrocketing cost of food, and it’s not hard to see why our college campuses have some Marxist-sympathizing youth clamoring for a Socialist Messiah to show them the way. An immediate raise in the minimum wage of 75-cents an hour will not appease all. It will not cause the need for food stamps to disappear. Nor will it cause those on the Left to give up their anti-Capitalist tirades while sporting their Che Guevara T-shirts. However, it will give the market, businesses, and workers a chance to see just what does happen, adjust, and move on from there. President Obama and Congressional Democrats are pushing a minimum wage increase to $10.10 per hour and refuse to compromise with Republicans who support the immediate 75-cent increase. Even to an amateur economist it should be painfully obvious that a $2.85 increase would cause massive layoffs. This is just another example of party before principle. There’s an election coming up, and the National Democrats want to paint the Republicans in a bad light, so they are using their majority in the U.S. Senate to make sure no minimum wage increase of any kind is passed this year. Of course, the Indiana Republican-controlled Legislature and our Republican Governor also have the option to act and do the right thing. Governor Pence likes to brag about the great “business environment” in our state. Workers are a part of businesses too, not just the CEO’s. Let’s make those businesses even more attractive to workers by offering a wage that at minimum puts gas in their cars and food on their tables.
Posted on: Tue, 27 May 2014 20:33:39 +0000
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